"It is for your sake that
we drink the milk and eat those apples." - George Orwell, Animal Farm.
With an asset base of $110 million and net surplus of $1.3 last financial year, Te Runanga o Ngati Awa is responsible to more than 19,000 people who claim Ngati Awa as their tribe and it is our job to ensure that our leaders make the right decisions for us all.

Friday, 24 October 2014

It has been a few months since the last post but as many of
you know I have taken up a position at the Whakatane Beacon.

For me there is no better time to do this. I will miss Tu
Mai Te Toki. It gave me the forum to introduce myself back to Ngati Awa, in a
way that was me.

You may not have always agreed with what I have written but
I stand by the factual statements I have made in this blog.And, as always, I encourage you to check it
out for yourself.

Go to your marae meetings, go to the runanga meetings, go to
every hui you can make because you never know where your skills might be able
to be used to help make our people better. Isn’t that all any of us can ask to
do?

There is a Te Runanga o Ngati Awa meeting next week and it
should be a boomer. Since the last meeting we have seen the official resignation
of Sir Wira Gardiner, a scandal involving Te Wananga o Awanuiarangi and the call for three new
directors to be appointed to the tribe’s financial arm.

No doubt
these will all be on the table for discussion. As a reporter, I have contacted
Te Runanga o Ngati Awa to ask whether I can still attend. I tried to meet with
the chief executive, Enid Ratahi-Pryor and I had to eventually corner runanga
chairman Jo Mason.

He asked if
I was Ngati Awa.

“Well then
you can come to the meetings.”

That was
great news, I hope I can sit in the public gallery as I have always done. I
understand the need for confidentiality and would hope that if sensitive
matters are going to be discussed that the board members would use the
in-committee clause for that issue.

But what is
theharm of having me there? What is the harm of sunlight if you are doing your
job?

Ngati Awa
have achievements that we should be screaming from the roof tops. I hope to be
able to write about them for the newspaper but I will not turn a blind eye to
the negative even if it means that I have been airing our dirty laundry.

Ngati Awa
deserve to know the whole picture and clearly there has been a
break-down in the traditional forms of getting iwi news.

I am a journalist who has ethics and a code. I will promise
you that I will never sensationalise stories about Maori. I will promise to
always present the story as factually as I can without personal opinion or
bias.

I promise to be a good reporter. And I promise, always, to
be Ngati Awa.

I am off to the Ngati Awa Te Toki festival to help out and celebrate but check me out at the Beacon, there is a pay-wall but I can
assure you it will be worth the subscription.